IFFR 2008

Michael Pilz

Meditative cinematographic journey by the poetic documentary maker Pilz in which pieces from his earlier work and home movies come together in a spontaneous composition. Eastern and western wisdom serve to guide the way.

Kings & Aces

A prima vista

Arnaud Desplechin

Desplechin made a very personal family documentary that could very well be the preparation for a major historic family epic. Father is going to clear the family house in Roubaix, reason enough for the film maker to interrogate his father thoroughly about the man's own childhood memories.

L'aimée

Alexander Sokurov

Through the wise and very personal gaze of a Russian grandmother who goes to see her grandson on the Chechen front, Alexandr Sokurov offers a last chance for humanity in the bare and hopeless brutality of not only the Chechen conflict but all of today's inhuman wars.

Alexandra

Eric Rohmer

According to rumours, the last but as-ever charming film by Rohmer is a bucolic 'moral tale' situated in the fifth century in Gall. The young shepherd Céladon is rejected by his betrothed Astrée. He doesn't want to live any more and throws himself in the river, but is saved by nymphs. With sheep.

Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon

Jacques Nolot

First part of the trilogy that Jacques Nolot completed in 2007 with Avant que j’oublie. Open without adornment, he tells the slightly autobiographically inspired story of a homosexual man played by himself.

L'arrière pays

At the end of his beautiful trilogy about a homosexual man, director Nolot again shines in the leading role as the lonely former gigolo who has not planned for the future and has to face old age without the sympathy of his friends.

Avant que j'oublie

Sietske Tjallingii

Homage to the Coen brothers that turns into a true bowl-o-drama.

Bowled Over

Alexei Balabanov

Extremely realistic thriller about Soviet Russia in the 1980s, when a crazy policeman introduces his own laws when he has to solve two important cases: the kidnap of the daughter of a local party leader and a murder. Balabanov at his best.

Cargo 200

James Benning

The master of the American landscape film focuses his unique cinematographic eye on the famous landscape work of art Spiral Jetty (1970) by Robert Smithson by the Great Salt Lake in Utah. 16 visits record fascinating differences in light, time and season.

Casting a Glance

Ermanno Olmi

Maestro Olmi’s last feature (after this he is going to focus on documentaries) links messianic messages to everyday wisdom, with a great photographic eye for the natural beauty of the Italian countryside. A young professor leaves university for a village where a love grows that is more powerful than the written word.

Centochiodi

Youssef Chahine

Khaled Youssef

By the great director of Egyptian popular cinema. About a young woman who rebels against the corrupt police chief who has an eye on her. A screenplay filled with opposites results in a socially critical, colourful sketch in which justice is victorious.

Chaos

The story of a box-office clerk, a punter and a projectionist each interested in one of the others. To complete their love life, they therefore have to take in the porn films in the local cinema where they met each other.

La chatte à deux têtes

Júlio Bressane

Sensual, lyrical, intelligent and musical: stylised Brazilian film version of the well-known story of Cleopatra and the structures of seduction and power it's based on. In other words Cleopatra à la Bressane.

Cléopatra

Lav Diaz

Lav Diaz is the master of the full-length film. Of the very long film, rather. A spontaneously made film against the background of the natural disaster that was caused by the hurricane Durian in 2006 in the Philippines. A film about new and old sorrow and also an ode to life goes on.

Death in the Land of Encantos

José Luis Guerín

With his very original and occasionally Cubist-looking visual aesthetics, Guerín tells the story of a man looking for an unknown woman. No dramatic genuflections here. Guerín brings us pure cinema and fascinates and irritates until the absent plot is no longer important. See also Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia.

En la ciudad de Sylvia

Kitano Takeshi

Kitano is here an unbridled satirist. He dares to ridicule the great film maker Kitano. Silent like a clown in a State Circus, Kitano opens all the registers. The ultimate fancy dress party. Kitano, the emperor with clothes.

Glory to the Filmmaker!

Abolfazl Jalili

As well as being a talented student, Hafez is also a romantic poet who fancies the daughter-in-law of the mufti. He's caught out and embarks on a journey filled with obstacles and encounters. Master film maker Jalili tells a contemporary fairytale, and ode to love and art, inspired by the legendary Persian poet.

Hafez

Edwin

A remake of Joel Coen's graduation film about a woman who does the hula-hoop to provide her telephone sex clients with the right sounds.

Hulahoop Soundings

Todd Haynes

Haynes gives everyone his own favourite Bob Dylan. Blanchett, Gere, Bale and three more actors all crawl into the skin of the mysterious pop icon in an unusually successful and layered experimental biographical film. A must both for Dylan lovers and cinephiles.

I'm Not There

Ulrich Seidl

As usual, Seidl ignores all taboos in his stagings and guards the style to the ultimate. This dark comedy is about the crossing stories of a Ukrainian nurse (import) and a maladjusted Viennese security man (export).

Import Export

Zelimir Zilnik

New adventures by Kenedi Hasani (earlier the protagonist from Kenedi Goes Back Home, IFFR 2004) in which the director visits the Roma kid and rebel with a cause again and pursues his life in an acted documentary.

Kenedi Is Getting Married

Béla Tarr

Plesently slow, moody and - for Tarr - short film version of Simenon's crime novel from 1933, shot in glorious black &amp; white by Fred Kelemen. Sullen night watchman witnesses a murder and finds a suitcase full of money. A moral dilemma is the result.

The Man from London

Tonino De Bernardi

A personal, contemporary film meditation about the mythical figure of Medea. The charismatic Isabelle Huppert in the leading role plays the immigrant Irene who lives with her children in a Paris suburb and works as a singer in a nightclub.

Médée miracle

Rosa von Praunheim

At the age of 65, the controversial louse in the fur of German cinema Rosa Von Praunheim found out that he was adopted. He has immediately made an investigative documentary into the roots of his life and hence a personal story about the horror of the Second World War.

Meine Mütter - Spurensuche in Riga

Angela Schanelec

In her acute contemporary version of Chekhov's Seagull, the former theatre actress Angela Schanelec reveals her phenomenal control of dialogue and filmic language. Unspoken pauses acquire form in small, radical sentences and camerawork that can tackle any character depth.

Nachmittag

Joel Coen

Ethan Coen

Latest, highly regarded film by the Coen Brothers, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, that makes a suitcase full of money the bait for three fully ripened characters after each other's blood. A bloody classic filled with dark humour and unpredictable plot turns.

No Country for Old Men

Jon Jost

The film maker once refused to serve in Vietnam and ended up in jail. His anger about war has not grown any less over the years. In this oppressive portrait, he follows a young Iraq veteran. Not a film to cheer you up, but that was precisely the intention.

Over Here

Péter Forgács

A very cinematographic black &amp; white adaptation of the novel Own Death by the Hungarian writer Péter Nádas, made by the prize-winning Hungarian master Péter Forgács. The first fiction film by this film maker/artist who has so far made found-footage films.

Own Death

Gus Van Sant

Not just a skate film, but a skate film with an exciting thriller story, filmed by master cameraman Christopher Doyle and directed by Gus Van Sant (Meet the Maestro 2007). Film full of very young actors found by the maker on MySpace.

Paranoid Park

Ken Jacobs

An old film master taps an old roll of film with his magic wand and behold: a hallucinogenic new look at a world that has disappeared.

RAZZLE DAZZLE the Lost World

Aoyama Shinji

Asano Tadanobu, the Japanese actor with the beautiful long hair, plays a man with a fairly complicated past. He was once deserted by his mother and has killed someone. A friendly man who takes on the care for an illegal Chinese child. But his past continues to pursue him.

Sad Vacation

Lee Chang-Dong

Film like a major novel, this masterpiece by Lee Chang-Dong: ex-Tiger jury member and ex-minister of culture. Jeon Do-Yeon won a Golden Palm for her intense role as a woman who tries a new start after a tragedy. Song Kang-Ho as garage owner who looks on also deserved a prize.

Secret Sunshine

Pere Portabella

A new film in the unique oeuvre of the Barcelonan outsider Portabella is about Bach. With lots of his music, but it's the opposite of an ordinary biopic. Made up of fascinating scenes that - like short films commenting on each other - put European art and history in perspective.

Die Stille vor Bach

Stephen Dwoskin

A film that seeks a balance between feature, form and lighting essay, with autobiographical elements and echoes of the primeval fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. By the former Film Maker in Focus Stephen Dwoskin.

The Sun and the Moon

Garin Nugroho

A very special musical happening. At and around the famous Borubudur temple on Java in Indonesia, musicians and theatre makers from very different backgrounds were brought together. Free jazz was mixed with the oldest form of Java music and traditional musicians were persuaded to improvise.

Teak Leaves at the Temples

Kira Muratova

Stylised and thoughtful absurdist Muratova film consists of two parts that intertwine with each other. Part one is set entirely in a theatre, part two is about an aging man and his lustful urges. The film explores the borders between theatre and real life, actors and humans, art and death.

Two in One

In its origin it is basically a kind of prelude to En la ciudad de Sylvia, but here shown as an afterthought, the silent black &amp; white photo essay à la La jetée by Chris Marker: 'A more ideal example of high art cinema simply doesn't exist on the current world circuit,' thought Variety. See also En la ciudad de Sylvia.

Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia

Jia Zhangke

Portrait of the unusual Chinese fashion designer Ma Ke, who incorporates the natural process of growth and decay in her clothes. But Jia goes further: in an elegant way he juxtaposes Ma Ke with mass production, but also places her in the tradition of small village dressmakers. Part two in his 'Trilogy of Artists'.

Useless

Roy Andersson

Shot following the same inexchangeable, picturesquely beautiful procedure as Andersson's previous masterpiece Songs from the Second Floor. The new one is lighter but just as sour, funny but still filled with pity for poor humanity, and accessible - but it still hurts.

In 'Kings & Aces'